Kurds Quotes

• Kurds are like fire, if approached kindly they will warm you, if approached badly they will burn you

  Leyla Zana

  Kindness, Fire, Burning

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• In the 20th century, the Muslim world created a vision of religious nationalism. Turkey, for example, had to be ethnically Turkish. Kurds, Armenians, other minorities didn't have a place in such a vision of a nation-state.

  Feisal Abdul Rauf

  Religious, Turkeys, Vision

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• So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

  William Eldridge Odom

  Nice, Years, Ideas

  "Q&A: Odom on an Iraq Exit Strategy". Interview with Bernard Gwertzman, www.nytimes.com. May 7, 2004.

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• Nothing worse than Kurds in your milk. General, make sure i never see another Kurd again.

  Saddam Hussein

  Milk, Dictator

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• I always tell the Kurds who defend independence: Let's say we declared the independent Kurdish state and Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey imposed sanctions on us, without waging a war. How would we survive under those circumstances?

  Jalal Talabani

  War, Independent, Iraq

  "Talabani: War against Turkey equal to war against democracy". Turkish Daily News, September 14, 2007.

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• There's been so much bad blood between the Kurds and the Turks.

  Ahmet Ertegun

  Blood, Bad Blood

  Source: www.slate.com

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• As far as the command centers are concerned in Raqqa and to a lesser degree Mosul, cut those off. Do the same kind of thing that we did with Sinjar , working with our embedded special forces with the Kurds, shut off the supply route, soften them up, then we go in with specials ops followed by our air force to take them over. Those are things that work.

  Benjamin Carson

  Cutting, Air, Special

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• I used to be someone who would not even tread on an ant. But this is a war for honor and self-defense. A 100 percent elimination policy (by Ankara of the Kurds) has forced me to defense and it has become a glorious defense of a people.

  Abdullah Ocalan

  War, Self, People

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• Iraqi Kurds, out of desperate necessity, have forged one of the most watchful and vigilant anti-terrorist communities in the world. Terrorists from elsewhere just can't operate in that kind of environment. Al Qaeda members who do manage to infiltrate are hunted down like rats. This conservative Muslim society did a better job protecting me from Islamist killers than the U.S. military could do in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

  Michael Totten

  Jobs, Military, Community

  "Iraq Without a Gun" by Michael Totten, www.michaeltotten.com. February 13, 2006.

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• The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years.

  Peter DeFazio

  Years, Common, Conflict

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• The Arabs are victims. You have Shia Arabs, under Arabization under Saddam Hussein, who were forcibly moved up there... You have Kurds who were displaced by these Arabs that were moved up there by Saddam Hussein. Kurds have been displaced from Kirkuk for hundreds of years.

  Raymond T. Odierno

  Years, Hussein, Victim

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• We're dealing with such enormous problems today that we have no other choice but to work together. If Iraq fails, if a religious civil war breaks out and the neighboring states are drawn into this conflict, if the Kurds declare independence and al-Qaida takes over an entire province - that's when the consequences will be dramatic.

  Zalmay Khalilzad

  Religious, War, Iraq

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• To move any regime you need to have co-operation and co-ordination between Kurds, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, the people and the army. Until we have this we cannot change the regime.

  Jalal Talabani

  Change, Moving, Army

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• We need to use overwhelming air power. We need to be arming the Kurds. We need to be fighting and killing ISIS where they are.

  Ted Cruz

  Fighting, Air, Isis

  Republican Presidential Debate, www.nytimes.com. December 15, 2015.

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• There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.

  Les Aspin

  Sympathy, Hussein, Administration

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• Where were the peacekeepers? Where was the UN? Why was the entire world ignoring Saddam's attack upon his own people? Were we Kurds considered so unworthy, so disposable? I longed to stand at the top of the mountain and shout out, Where are you, world? Where are you ?

  Jean Sasson

  People, Mountain, World

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• Under the Assads, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language at school, or even from speaking it in the military. The result is a generation of Syrian Kurds, many now in late middle age, who cant write their own language.

  Luke Harding

  Military, Writing, School

  "War is raging in Aleppo but in a classroom 40km away, there are grounds for hope" by Luke Harding, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2012.

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• Turkey is saying that it wants to preserve Sunni dominance in Mosul. Obviously, there, the Kurds, the Shia, the Iraqi government have their own agendas.

  Patrick Cockburn

  Government, Turkeys, Agendas

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• If they make the deadline because the Shiites and Kurds essentially rammed a draft through over Sunni Arab objections, there will be hell to pay.

  Wayne White

  Pay, Hell, Deadline

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• There are sort of Kurdish districts there in Mosul, or there used to be, but the Kurds mostly fled or were driven out. The same is true of the Christians.

  Patrick Cockburn

  Christian, Driven, Used

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had and used significant weapons of mass destruction on his own people, both the Kurds and the Iranians.

  Curt Weldon

  Mass Destruction, People, Doubt

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• It is important to understand that there are two separate battles taking place in Iraq: there is the political rift between the Sunnis, Shia and the Kurds and there is a foreign extremist group - ISIS - trying to take advantage of the political environment through violence. If the Iraqis can resolve their political differences, it will be far more difficult for ISIS to thrive. Moving forward, we should continue to evaluate additional steps to help combat ISIS as we see what the Iraqis are willing to do politically, but we must also firmly guard against mission creep.

  David Adam Smith

  Military, Moving, Isis

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• There is a difference between Iraq, where you have Sunni, Shia, and Kurds put together after the First World War by the Western powers. It doesn't work. It needs to break up into three parts.

  John Kasich

  War, Iraq, Differences

  CNN-Facebook Republican Presidential Debate, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. December 16, 2015.

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• We seem to be afraid to give the Kurds weaponry. We like to send it for some strange reason through Baghdad, and then they only get a tenth of it.

  Benjamin Carson

  Giving, Baghdad, Strange

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• For the first time the people of Iraq are united. Today on CNN I saw a Kurd, a Shiite and a member of the Republican Guard coming together to cart off a big screen TV.

  Jay Leno

  Iraq, Cnn, People

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